On Monday, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act, authorizing $768.2 billion in military spending. The defense bill also includes a 2.7% pay raise for all service members in 2022.
“The Act provides vital benefits and enhances access to justice for military personnel and their families and includes critical authorities to support our country’s national defense,” said Biden.
The new total of $768.2 billion is $25 billion more than what Biden had initially requested from Congress. That prior proposal was rejected by both Democrats and Republicans for concerns that it would undermine US efforts to keep pace militarily with China and Russia.
The new bill allocates $7.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and contains a statement of congressional support for the defense of Taiwan. These measures are intended to lessen China’s influence in the region.
There’s also $300 million set aside for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $4 billion for the European Defense Initiative. Both measures are a show of support at a time when Russian aggression against its neighbors has increased.
Another provision of the bill is the criminalization of sexual harassment in the military as an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for the first time ever.
It also mandates that a unit’s commander is removed from the decision-making process in connection with a range of serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter, and kidnapping, besides sexual assault and harassment.
“These reforms, which are supported by longstanding advocates for survivors of the sexual assault crisis in the military, will take the prosecution of all sex crimes in the military away from the control of the military commander,” said Representative Adam Smith, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “Instead, qualified, independent, uniformed attorneys – ultimately overseen by the civilian service secretaries – will have the sole authority for charging decisions and the responsibility to prosecute those charges.”
The bill was passed through the House and Senate earlier this month with bipartisan support. As previously reported by The Dallas Express, only four members of the Texas Congressional delegation voted against this defense bill: Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX-35), Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01), Al Green (D-TX-09), and Chip Roy (R-TX-21).
“I cannot and will not in good conscience rubber stamp an NDAA that is 2100 pages long, that I’ve had less than a day to review, and that contains so many provisions unrelated, or even contrary, to our national defense,” declared Congressman Chip Roy. “Our service members deserve better, and so does the republic they defend.”
Roy also criticized the bill for how it would “continue to allow the termination of service members’ careers over what should be a private medical decision not to take the over-politicized COVID-19 vaccine.”